Unsung Voices

Who &quote;speaks&quote; to us in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in Wagner's operas, in a Mahler symphony? In asking this question, Carolyn Abbate opens nineteenth-century operas and instrumental works to new interpretations as she explores the voices projected by music. The nineteenth-century metaphor of music that &quote;sings&quote; is thus reanimated in a new context, and Abbate proposes interpretive strategies that &quote;de-center&quote; music criticism, that seek the polyphony and dialogism of music, and that celebrate musical gestures often marginalized by conventional music analysis.